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A. POLOSA, MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO NAZIONALE DELLA SIBARITIDE. IL MEDAGLIERE (Tekmeria 12). Paestum: Pandemos, 2009. Pp. 304, numerous pls. isbn9788887744224. €80.00.

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A. POLOSA, MUSEO ARCHEOLOGICO NAZIONALE DELLA SIBARITIDE. IL MEDAGLIERE (Tekmeria 12). Paestum: Pandemos, 2009. Pp. 304, numerous pls. isbn9788887744224. €80.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2012

Michael H. Crawford*
Affiliation:
University College London
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Abstract

Type
Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2012. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

It has long been one of the oddities of numismatic research that we have been better served with publications of excavations from the Roman provinces than from Italy; this volume takes a major step to remedy the imbalance. It begins with a number of hoards: S. Nicola di Amendolara, containing incuse staters and drachms of Metapontum, Sybaris and Croton, and coming from one of the key sites for the early history of Greek colonization; Rossano, containing 96 denarii down to 42 b.c., and coming from a ‘villa rustica’; and Montegiordano, containing three fractional silver pieces of Heraclea, Croton and perhaps Thurii, and nine bronzes of Metapontum, going down to the early third century; the ‘fattoria’ where the hoard was found also produced graffiti in Oscan (Imagines Italicae (2011) Metapontum 2). But it is excavation material that forms the richness of the volume, some of which I highlight here: the libral Prow quadrans from Laos (p. 73, n. 2, no. 2) is also published in NSc 1978, pp. 453–4, whence Coinage and Money (1985), p. 287; a libral Prow sextans from Laos (p. 70, no. 21) was first published in 1989. Booty acquired by the enemies of Rome in the early years of the Hannibalic War still seems the best explanation: note the libral Prow triens from Torre Mordillo (p. 93, no. 95, reference to RRC 35/5 missing; nos 98–9 are RRC 38/5 (the reference is also wrong for p. 172, no. 387; and p. 172, no. 388, is RRC 39/4); see also p. 125, no. 1). The place of Torre Mordillo within the economic orbit of Thurii, until it became a Brettian stronghold, emerges with absolute clarity. For the dramatic and violent end of the site in c. 207 b.c. it is necessary to go back not only to Colburn's article in NSc 1977, but also to his article in Expedition 1967. By contrast, Castiglione di Paludi has already become well-known as a Brettian centre that continued to function well down into the second century b.c., a site with which Polosa rightly compares Oppido Mamertina (p. 131, n. 7): it is good to have all the numismatic material laid out and discussed. Page 164, no. 310 is ascribed to Brentesion and rather idiosyncratically sandwiched between Agrigentum and Syracuse; but the view of P. Attianese, cited and rejected in n. 9, is in fact clearly right: the coin is an issue of ΒΡΕΙΓ (Imagines Italicae, p. 57, n. 247), probably yet another Brettian community, perhaps located at Castiglione or Pietrapaola (ibid., n. 248); the coin from there, p. 124, no. 1, is a bronze of Syracuse, as SNG Copenhagen 736 (as Paolo Visonà observes to me).